WASHINGTON – Regardless of how a candidate spends his or her time (a metric that was shaken in 2020 due to the pandemic), one of the most revealing indicators of elections is how campaigns spend their money on TV commercials .
A week after the Trump campaign went on the airwaves again after a break to resume its advertising strategy, we can learn a lot about the state of the race simply by comparing the ads that both campaigns have been broadcast since the beginning of August.
When it comes to spending, the Trump campaign is still playing catchup after it went on the air again. After Trump outpaced Biden’s campaign on TV and radio in July with $ 10 million – including millions invested in an ominous crime-focused advertising campaign that has since largely disappeared from the airwaves – Biden has Trump with almost a $ 2 million -1 margin spent every day since Trump’s ads came back, according to ad trackers at Advertising Analytics.
But it may be the message of the Trump campaign itself that is more interesting.
The first thing that really stands out: While Biden appears in almost all of his ads, with his top two most airy ads told in his own words, Trump is almost completely absent from the spots of his own campaign outside the standard ‘I approve of this post Disclaimer. (The only exception: A slightly airy Spanish-language ad in Arizona that briefly praises Trump’s leadership.)
That means Trump’s name, policies and image have gone completely unnoticed in more than $ 2.5 million worth of ads sent so far this month.
At the same time, the Biden Camp spends most of its advertising space on spots that show the candidate giving speeches about the pandemic response – giving some not-so-subtle pushback to the “Basement Biden” theme, we might add.
The second thing that stands out: No active ads through the president’s campaign recognize the coronavirus at all, not even past it.
Instead, almost all of Trump Biden’s ads linked to the ‘far left’ or show his image next to photos of Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But no one even refers to the virus that has infected more than 5 million Americans to date.
Compare those ads to Biden’s, which Trump blows for his response to the coronavirus – and calls for uniting Americans to fight the pandemic.
In one Biden spot with both English and Spanish versions, a woman mourns the loss of her grandmother from Covid-19. In another, a pensioner at The Villages lamented not showing up for her grandchildren, saying, “although I do not blame Donald Trump for the virus, I do blame him for his lack of action.”
And in a few more places, Biden is asking Americans to wear masks, meet the threat “as one country,” and elect a president who will not “ignore the crisis.”
This is what all of this signals to us: Even though the president has been unbelievably optimistic about the virus’ disappearing ‘and the economy “returning strongly”, his own campaign has not sent a valuable positive message to voters about the role of’ the president in recovery. And the fact that Trump barely appears in the ads of his own campaign is an implicit recognition of his net negative favoritism rates.
Omnipresint? Or a not-so-presented president?
Speaking of ignoring the pandemic, the fact that Trump’s advertising strategy pretends the virus does not exist goes hand in hand with another Trump trait that was on display over the weekend: His hands-off approach to negotiations.
Despite his campaign as a dealer, Trump spent the weekend at his golf resort in New Jersey, while his aides tried – and failed – to reach a compromise coronavirus help package.
And while his executive mandates for unemployment benefits and the taxman – who are likely to face immediate legal challenges – at least acknowledged the economic crisis, confusion about their legality and effectiveness has mostly resulted in more bickering and uncertainty about what – if any – really is impact they will have on Americans suffering ..
As one of our colleagues wrote last week, it is part of a ‘well-established pattern’ for Trump to take a passive role in high-stakes negotiations.
Throughout his entire campaign and his presidency, Trump seems to have been around, making public statements about the policy battles. But whether it’s outsourcing the task force of coronavirus to its vice president, or watching negotiations on immigration or gun reform, or sitting efforts to get a legislative recovery deal, or staying out of one’s own advertisements about campaigns is present the president, really, in the nuts and bolts of his administration and his campaign?
2020 Vision: Biden its time
Things got a little tense over the weekend on the pick-front vice presidency, with some high-profile Democrats lamenting the amount of opposition research circulating about the final candidates. And there is something behind the scenes grumbling about Biden’s deadline for decisive decisions.
NBC News reported over the weekend that top sources indicated that the pick could come “or earlier” in the middle of this week – even as soon as today, per NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. But some of the same sources have also claimed that “his only real deadline is the Democratic National Convention,” which begins on August 17.
But while we wait for the announcement, it is worth remembering a few general trends about the livestock process.
First: There is always hand-twisting and jockeying about the choice, which is usually forgotten after the outing. (If, of course, the ticket is lost, it will all be missed again.)
Second: As we wrote in July, candidates who are sure they are rarely led by a “do no harm” choice.
And third: Of course, the choice of a governing partner reveals a lot about the values of the nominee and decision-making. But running mates are simply not an enormous factor in the end results of an election. (If so, would Bush / Quayle really have spent Dukakis / Bentsen in 1988?)
Data Download: The numbers you need to know today
5,059,327: The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States, according to the most recent data from NBC News and health officials. (That’s 164,043 more cases than Friday morning.)
163,504: The number of deaths in the United States due to the virus so far. (That’s 2,951 more than Friday morning.)
61.79 million: The number of coronavirus tests so far conducted in the United States, according to researchers at The COVID Tracking Project.
97,000: The number of children in America who tested positive for COVID-19 in the last two weeks of July, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, rose 40 percent in that time frame.
5.1: The magnitude of the earthquake that struck the border between North Carolina and Virginia was the strongest in the area since 1916.
101 days: How long has New Zealand gone without a new case of coronavirus from the spread of the community, per the Ministry of Public Health.
Tweet of the day
Advertisement Watch by Ben Kamisar
The current Ad Watch zeros are on a little-considered but extremely controversial primary in Georgia, where voters will effectively decide their new representative tomorrow in the heavily Republican 14th District.
Tomorrow’s primary runoff has Dr. John Cowan and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Both are unabashed supporters of President Trump, but Green was fired by her party after Politico reported on her serious racist and other controversial remarks. Green had already raised eyebrows for her comments on the early “Qanon” conspiracy theory, and we’ve written about how this race set a great example of the very ways Republicans reported on coronavirus.
But as Politico reports, the cavalry did not really come to encourage Cowan. And he’s been largely on the airwaves alone – not one of the candidates has received significant outside support on the airwaves, and Cowan has broadcast Green on TV and radio $ 200,000 to $ 65,000.
Keep an eye out for this one at noon of the handful of competing primaries across the country tomorrow.
“Unconstitutional Slop”
Negotiations between Democrats and the White House broke down this weekend as federal weekly unemployment benefits lapsed. But instead of passing legislation, the president on Saturday signed four executive orders (which Democrats and some Republicans doubt the constitutionality of) in an attempt to take matters into their own hands.
The EOs postpone year-end payroll taxes for Americans earning less than $ 100,000 a year, postpone student loan payments by the end of the year, discourage discouragement and promise to extend federal unemployment benefits to a reduced level of $ 400 / week. You can read more about the executive assignments here – and the pushback about them -.
At Sunday’s House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi called the president’s actions “unconstitutional” (echoing a sentence first used by Republican Sen. Ben Sasse) and said he was “undermining Social Security and Medicare.” ‘- which are financed through tax breaks. Meanwhile, President Peter Navarro’s economic adviser told one of us that “the Lord and the founding ancestors have carried out executive orders because of partisan bickering and divided government.”
As for when can we see a legislative package? That’s in the air. While senators will be under a 24-hour advisory to return to Washington if there is a deal this week, they are for the most part out of town.
The Lid: Phoenix Rising
Don’t forget the pod from Friday, when we looked at the nation’s hottest market for political ads.
ICYMI: What else is happening in the world?
President Trump has blurred the line between politics and politics, reports Lauren Egan of NBC.
Sen. Ron Johnson is apprehending FBI Director Christopher Wray for documents related to the investigation into Russian interference in elections, Politico reports.
The New York Times profiles FDA commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, the man “caught between scientists and the president.”
A leading, pro-democracy media executor in Hong Kong has been arrested in a major escalation under China’s new, controversial national security law.
NBC News gained access to the Wuhan lab at the center of the coronavirus pandemic.
President Trump is deny report that his White House the subject of adding him to Mount Rushmore with the office of South Dakota Gov. Christ Name broken.
Puerto Rico’s primary elections were marred by massive problems with the distribution of votes, violations that left many without the ability to vote and called for a re-election, partial primary and for the dismissal of top election officials.
